Greenland update for 2010: record melting and a massive calving event

No humans were present on the morning of August 4, 2010, in a remote fjord in Northwest Greenland, when the air vibrated with a thunderous crack as one of the largest icebergs in world history calved from the Petermann Glacier, the island's second largest ocean-terminating glacier. Where the glacier meets the sea, a 43 mile-long tongue of floating ice existed at the beginning of 2010. On August 4 2010, a quarter of this 43 mile-long tongue of floating ice fractured off, spawning a 100 square mile ice island four times the size of Manhattan, with a thickness half that of the Empire State building. According to Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, the freshwater stored in this ice island could have kept the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years, or kept all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days. There was speculation that the ice island could find its way into the open Atlantic Ocean in two years, and potentially pose a threat to oil platforms and ships. However, as the ice island made its turn to get from the narrow Petermann Fjord to enter Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada, the mighty iceberg split into thousands of small icebergs that will not pose an unusual threat to shipping when they emerge into the Atlantic.

Figure 1. The 100 square-mile ice island that broke off the Petermann Glacier heads out of the Petermann Fjord in this image taken by NASA's Aqua satellite on August 21, 2010. Image credit: NASA. I've constructed a 7-frame satellite animation available here that shows the calving and break-up of the Petermann Glacier ice island. The animation begins on August 5, 2010, and ends on September 21, with images spaced about 8 days apart. The images were taken by NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.

Petermann Glacier spawned smaller ice islands in 2001 (34 square miles) and in 2008 (10 square miles). In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf, about 60 miles to the west of Petermann Glacier, disintegrated and became a 34 square-mile ice island. The August 2010 Petermann Glacier calving event created the largest iceberg observed in the Arctic since 1962, when the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on the north coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island calved off a massive 230 square mile chunk. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf also calved off a huge 21 square mile ice island a few days after the August 2010 Petermann Glacier calving event. According to an article in livescience.com, "Driftwood and narwhal remains found along the Ellesmere coast have radiocarbon dates from roughly 3,000 to 6,800 years ago, implying that the ice has been intact since those remains were deposited." All of the these calving events are evidence that the ice sheets in the Arctic are responding as one would expect to significantly warmer temperatures.

Warmer ocean temperatures cause significant melting of Greenland's glaciers At a talk last December at the world's largest conference on climate change, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, glacier expert Eric Rignot of UC-Irvine implicated ocean warming as a key reason for the calving of the Petermann Glacier's ice island. The ocean waters near the glacier have warmed by 1 - 2°C over the past three years, he said, and all of the periphery of Greenland has seen ocean heat increases in recent years, with the result that 20 - 80% of all the mass lost by Greenland's glaciers in recent years could be attributed to melting of the glaciers by warmer waters attacking them from beneath. Ocean temperatures along the southwest coast of Greenland (60N to 70N, 60W to 50W) computed from the UK Hadley Center data set during 2010 were 2.9°C (5.2°F) above average--a truly remarkable anomaly, and far warmer than the previous record of 1.5°C above average set in 2003. Sea surface temperature records for Greenland began in the 1920s. A study earlier this year published in the journal Science (Spielhagen et al., 2011) found that ocean temperatures on the east side of Greenland are now at their warmest levels in at least 2,000 years. The researchers studied a sediment core containing fossil remains of planktic foraminifers, which vary as a function of water temperature. The study noted that not only have the waters flowing northward on the east side of Greenland warmed significantly, the volume of water flowing north has also increased, resulting in a large transport of heat into the Arctic. "Such an increased heat input has far-reaching consequences," they wrote.

Figure 2. Departure of sea surface temperature from average for 2010 from the NOAA Daily Optimum Interpolation SST Anomaly data set for October 2010. Areas colored red are warmer than the 1971-2000 average, areas colored blue are cooler than that average. A large region of record warm water temperatures extended along the west coast of Greenland, leading to record warm air temperatures and record melting along the western portion of Greenland in 2010. Ocean temperatures along the southwest coast of Greenland (60N to 70N, 60W to 50W) computed from the UK Hadley Center data set during 2010 were 2.9°C (5.2°F) above average--a truly remarkable anomaly, surpassing the previous record of 1.5°C set in 2003. Sea surface temperature records for Greenland began in the 1920s. Image credit: NOAA Visualization Lab.

Record warmth and melting in Greenland during 2010Greenland's climate in 2010 was marked by record-setting high air temperatures, the greatest ice loss by melting since accurate records began in 1958, and the greatest mass loss of ocean-terminating glaciers on record. That was the conclusion of the 2010 Arctic Report Card, a collaborative effort between NOAA and European Arctic experts that comes out each year. Was 2010 the warmest year in Greenland's history? That is difficult to judge. We know it was also very warm in the late 1920s and 1930s in Greenland, but we only have two stations, Godtahab Nuuk and Angmagssalik, with weather records that go back that far (Figure 3.) Godtahab Nuuk set a record high in 2010, but temperatures at Angmagssalik in 2010 were similar to what was observed during several years in the 1920s and 1930s. Marco Tedesco of the City College of New York's Cryosphere Processes Laboratory remarked that last year's record warmth and melting in Greenland began when an unusually early spring warm spell reduced and "aged" the snow on the surface of the ice sheet, so that the snow became less reflective, allowing it to absorb more heat from the sun. This accelerated snow melt even further, exposing the bare ice, which is less reflective than snow and absorbs more heat. This feedback loop extended Greenland's record melting season well into the fall.

Figure 3. Historic temperatures in Greenland for the six stations with at least 50 years of data, as archived by NASA. Three of the six stations set record highs in 2010. However, only two of the six stations (Godtahab Nuuk and Angmagssalik) have data going back beyond the 1930s, which was a period of warmth in Greenland similar to the warmth of the current decade. Godtahab Nuuk set a record high in 2010, but 2003 still ranks as Angmagssalik's hottest year on record.

Figure 4. The 2010 summer melt season was lasted more than 40 days longer (purple colors) than the mean melt season from 1979 - 2007. Image credit: Arctic Report Card.

Why Greenland matters: sea level riseThe major concern with a warming climate in Greenland is melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which currently contributes about 25% of the observed 3 mm/year (1.2 inches per decade) global rise in sea level. Higher sea levels mean increased storm surge inundation, coastal erosion, loss of low-lying land areas, and salt water contamination of underground drinking water supplies. Greenland ice mass loss is accelerating over the long term, according to independent estimates using three different techniques (Figure 5), with more mass being lost each year than the previous year. According to Rignot et al., 2011, ice mass loss is also accelerating in Antarctica, and "the magnitude of the acceleration suggests that ice sheets will be the dominant contributors to sea level rise in forthcoming decades, and will likely exceed the IPCC projections for the contribution of ice sheets to sea level rise in the 21st century." As I discussed in a 2009 blog post, How much will global sea level rise this century?, the IPCC in 2007 estimated that global sea level would rise 0.6 - 1.9 feet by 2100, but several studies since then predict a higher range of 1.6 - 6.6 feet.

During the warm period 125,000 years ago, before the most recent ice age, roughly half of the Greenland ice sheet melted. This melting plus the melting of other smaller Arctic ice fields is thought to have caused 7.2 - 11.2 feet (2.2 - 3.4 meters) of the 13 - 20 foot (4 - 6 meter) sea level rise observed during that period. Temperatures in Greenland are predicted to rise 3°C by 2100, to levels similar to 125,000 years ago. If this level of warming occurs, we can expect sea levels to rise 13 - 20 feet several centuries from now. There's enough water locked away in the ice sheet to raise sea level to rise 23 feet (7 meters), should the entire Greenland ice sheet melt.

Figure 5. Loss of mass from Greenland's ice sheet in gigatons per year from 1992 through 2009, as computed from satellite gravity measurements from the GRACE satellites (red line) and from a mass balance method. The mass balance method computes the amount of snow on the surface, the amount of ice mass lost to wind and melt, and the amount of ice lost computed from glacier velocity and ice thickness. Adding together these terms gives the total amount of ice lost or gained over the ice sheet. The acceleration is given in gigatons per year squared. Another paper by Zwally et al. (2011) used a third method, laser satellite altimetry, to determine Greenland mass loss. Between 2003 to 2007, the ice sheet lost 171 gigatons of mass per year. Between 1992 to 2002, Greenland was only losing only 7 gigatons per year. Image credit: Rignot et al., 2011, Geophysical Research Letters.

ReferencesRignot, E., et al., 2011: Acceleration of the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to sea level rise, Geophysical Research Letters, in press, doi:10.1029/2011GL046583.

Quoting Neapolitan:We have talked about that numerous times here. How do you see things shaking out? That is, which names if any do you think will get their name on the wall of infamy? Here (again) my guesses:

Igor - 90%Tomas - 70%Karl - 50%Matthew - 40%Alex - 40%

All others have less than a 20% chance IMO.

You know, I honestly think that Karl has a better chance to be retired than Tomas. $5.6 billion is a lot for Mexico.

Igor - 90-100%. I'd be quite surprised if Igor isn't retired given the severe nature of the damage in Newfoundland. But I've been surprise before (Paloma in 2008 got retired, that took me by surprise) a significant reason for the 90-100% is IIRC there was an article stating that Canada was going to ask for Igor's retirement.

Karl - 90-100%.

Tomas - 90-95%. I'd be very surprised not to see Tomas retired.

Matthew - 50-60%. Matthew caused $2.6 billion in damages to Central America, and killed 126 people. They retired Felix, a Category 5, that hit in the same general area for killing 130 people.

Alex - 40-50%. I'm not sold that Alex will be retired, other than the 2.0$ in damage it caused. They didn't retire Dolly and it did virtually the same amount of damage as Alex did (though, Alex was stronger and more south)

Earl - 30%. Earl has a possibility for retirement based on the damage caused in the Leeward Islands and Canada though not as high as a chance as the above 4 do.

Quoting GeoffreyWPB:How are ya Ike? Check out this 80's video I found on YouTube!

LOL. One of their better songs.

Quoting SAINTHURRIFAN:good morning Ike spot on as usual.Great to see you post.I hope you are adjusting a little better.Anyway got to run its the Lords day and have to get everyone up and going.Ike good luck and God Bless.

Quoting GeoffreyWPB:How are ya Ike? Check out this 80's video I found on YouTube!

Wait--you forgot to complain about GW talk. Oh, and you didn't call anyone an idiot. And you definitely didn't ask anyone how the weather was going to be somewhere two-and-a-half months from now... ;-)

Extremely disorganized, the shear is intense and the SST's are very cool. Doubt the NHC makes a mention of it even, you can tell its still attached to a front even if its making a run to be sub-tropical (or currently is) Still, an interesting feature for March 6th.

Same comments by the same characters. Like someone was saying the other day...Groundhog Day.

Well, to be fair, it was the primary subject of Dr. Masters blog entry. And at any rate, to many of us it's vastly more interesting than page after page of "How are ya?" and "Check out this 80s video I found on YouTube" and "What does the GFS show for 192 hours?" and "All anyone ever talks about is global warming". But different strokes, I guess. ;-)

The tail end of the trough is about to pass through Naples; radar shows a small but vigorous patch of precipitation coming ashore within the next hour. The rain will be nice; we're dry, and still 9 weeks or so from monsoon season...

Quoting oceanbug:I think a reason so few non-scientists accept the reality of climate change is lack of understanding. The educational systems don't make it easy. For example, where I live they require four years of gym but only one year of science to graduate from high school.

A good interface between science knowledge and public knowledge is NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Yesterday he spoke with Rear Admiral David Titley, the Oceanographer of the Navy, about climate change. Admiral Titley was a GW skeptic but became convinced it's real by preponderance of the evidence.Link

A long time ago I heard, "The American public won't accept global warming until the people in Miami are treading water." I laughed at the time, but it's not funny any more.

I don't think it's lack of understanding. It's political in nature now.

You can throw all the facts you want at people (who don't run around with their head cut off anytime they hear that the planet is warming) who don't parrot the mainstream views on AGW, but in the end all you will do is inflame both sides. You can't scream rational knowledge into someones head if they've convinced themselves it's not true. You simply have to walk away from it and pray to god or wish upon a falling star that they change for the better. Anger will motivate them once they've already changed to alter how they live. But anger, without change, is not productive and won't change them.

This issue has become political and is no longer about facts. Long ago it might have started on more neutral terms, but it didn't stay that way very long. I could offer some supporting evidence for my views on this, but suffice to say that science has become too dominated by the democrat party. People on the right see this is a threat and in general have learned not to trust science results and have associated liberals with our science and educational systems since their members tend towards the left. If you look at a cartogram of the country and the left/right associations you see that liberals (democrats, independents) tend to live in cities and conservatives (republicans, independents) tend to live in rural and suburb areas. There're more registered democrats in this country than republicans. So despite that science and education are biased to leftwing thinking and people on the right can see this, when you add up the numbers you see that the people on the left have bigger numbers. So they'll win eventually.

It reminds me of hte military. Military support on the right is aggressive but military support on the left is more defensive in nature. People on the right tend to do support the troops events much more often and you see patriotic rallies more often from the right too. This is not to say that democrats are anti-military or not patriotic, but that there's an obvious difference between the parties if you look at it. Everytime I see a lefty mention how it's important for people on the right to realize the threat that climate change poses, I always see in my head a rightwinger saying to a leftwinger that it's important to realize the threat that global terrorism poses. Take something, politically, that you DISAGREE with and examine how you feel when you disagree. This is what people on the right are feeling. If you can do this you will somewhat understand why people on the right do not trust. If the left or democrats can in any way be associated with AGW or anything related then it automatically makes it suspicious. It would be the same for anyone on the left that believes something is associated with those on the right. It goes both ways.

Anyway if the goal is to convince everyone AGW is a threat then we must all study politics.

And then there're the contrarians. They're like chameleons. They disagree to disagree. In a forum they'd be labeled trolls. They're not a part of this discussion because IMHO they're a minority. The larger issue is that there's a political divide in the AGW topic. And until this divide is broken or somehow avoided there will always remain a significant chunk of the population that's disbelieving of AGW or at least skeptical. And you know, maybe it's good that some people are skeptical. It might not be a rational form of skepticism, but maybe nature never intended all skepticism to be rational?

"...Richard B. Hoover of NASA/NSSTC announced today the discovery of evidence for the detection of a fossilized cyanobacterial mat in a freshly fractured, interior surface of the Orgueil carbonaceous meteorite. Many of the images presented were obtained 21-23 July 2004..."

Ah, now I see the problem: it seems you've made the layman's mistake of confusing a quick, conjectural article written by a website journalist with a very heavily-researched, well-written, profoundly-vetted, thoroughly peer-reviewed article appearing in a highly-respected scientific publication. (As an aside, one reason for your inability to understand climate change, perhaps?) So, no, not "recycled". Detailed. Expanded upon. Looked into. Tested. Fleshed out. Discussed. Publicized. Reviewed, reviewed, and reviewed some more...

I'll say it again: if the meteoritic fossils indeed turn out to be evidence of extraterrestrial life--as the author suggests--this will go down as one of the most monumental discoveries in history. That's not "drama"; it's just the truth. And, no, it's not a big, booming voice from the sky as in Carl Sagan's awesome novel Contact, but it's every bit as profound, and the implications are just as far-reaching.

It appears *this* "journal" - Cosmic Ancestry - is not peer reviewed like the current paper:

"The purpose of this website is to serve as a resource about Cosmic Ancestry ("more than panspermia"), and to help establish it as a possible scientific account of the origin and development of life on Earth. (In it, Darwinian processes are still needed for tinkering and selection, but they do not account for macroevolutionary progress.) The website is operated pro bono, without any revenue or profit motive."

Emphasis added. J. Cosmology appears to hold itself to a rather higher standard, so I will still be most interested to follow the dialog there over the next few days.

Yes, thank you Nea. I'm glad that I read this here first. I will be looking forward to the expert commentary that will be appearing starting Monday. Lots of food for thought if true, and I can't imagine anyone trying to hoax something like this, or succeeding if they did. It's good to be alive and sentient for this news - let's hope expert consensus does not disappoint.

Quoting Neapolitan:Anyway, I'm out for the evening. But before I go, this, which, if true, will go down as one of the most momentous scientific statements in history:

"...the well-preserved mineralized trichomic filaments with carbonaceous sheaths found embedded in freshly fractured interior surfaces of the Alais, Ivuna, and Orgueil CI1 carbonaceous meteorites are interpreted as the fossilized remains of prokaryotic microorganisms that grew in liquid regimes on the parent body of the meteorites before they entered the Earth’s atmosphere...the absence of nitrogen in the cyanobacterial filaments detected in the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites indicates that the filaments represent the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth’s atmosphere"

I spent several hours this evening reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading the unpublished paper that hit the news this morning, and--while I'm certainly no cosmologist or astrobiologist--the parts of the very dense paper I can understand certainly seem to be pointing in an extremely interesting direction.

So: incredible? Or un-credible? We'll find out. To help allay any fears, there's this from the paper's introduction: "No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough analysis, and no other scientific journal in the history of science has made such a profoundly important paper available to the scientific community, for comment, before it is published."

P.S. -- This is from the synopsis:

"[The author] concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons, and other astral bodies. The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets."

"...Richard B. Hoover of NASA/NSSTC announced today the discovery of evidence for the detection of a fossilized cyanobacterial mat in a freshly fractured, interior surface of the Orgueil carbonaceous meteorite. Many of the images presented were obtained 21-23 July 2004..."

Quoting TexasGulf:I think its insulting that climatologists, meteorologists and other scientists automatically assume that people who DON'T react to Global Warming (or human-induced climate change) are automatically stupid and just don't understand.

I understand just fine. I also happen to agree that human-induced climate change is a scientific fact. However, I also believe that MANY scientists are over-reacting to "climate change" and are causing unnecessary hype and fear for financial gain and political favors.

Yes, climate change is happening and part of the cause is human activity. That doesn't necessarily mean that we are entirely the cause. However, the human species has an astronomically BAD track record at trying to regulate anything in nature. We start out with the best of intentions, but the results are normally an unmitigated disaster. The absolute LAST thing we'd want is for the U.N. and international politicians to try to regulate the Earth's climate. They can't even manage something natural and simple like malaria.

I happen to believe that "climate change" will be self-regulating. It's the Earth's ecosystem reaction to OUR activity. Climate Change isn't a bad thing... except to those who don't, can't or won't prepare for the results of it. I personally don't see climate change as being a problem, just a challenge and an opportunity. Change is good in many things, because it opens up new doors and new opportunities. Why should the climate be any different?

I'm not aware of any scientists overhyping climate change. Most of the hype I've seen comes from poorly written science articles in news rooms and magazines. Gavin had a blog entry about how poorly science is reported on realclimate.org. It's not just climate science either. Other sciences are prone to be "sensationalized" by the media to get more attention.

Scientists don't have a multi-billion dollar PR agency to work with. If they're lucky, they may get interviewed for something and what they say won't be too badly misconstrued. Anything else is just someone's creative interpretation of what the science is (and they can get it quite wrong).

If a piece of science journalism catches your attention, your best bet is to ignore the article and find the research paper behind it. That's the real deal.

Sometimes we don't thank those enough for their opinions; I really like your posts, Jedkins. enjoy all of your conversations. Keep it up.

Thanks, I'm just a student of meteorology working hard towards being a professional one in the future. I'm certainly not perfect, but I seek balance in life, peace and love for all, and honestly in all walks of life.

Although making peace on blogs is a little harder, sometimes I poke fun a little too much here :)

I think I would get along with most people here though in real life, even the ones I sometimes have probably angered, however, there are a few cynics who will insist on not having peace with me or you or anyone else who disagrees with them.

Quoting JFLORIDA:I dont think legitimate skeptics that have problems with specific issues of climate science are necessarily ignorant or stupid. Perhaps that is yet another error of assumption that AMS blog post makes.

Much of regional Queensland has been put on flood alert after widespread rain blocked roads and isolated towns. There is a severe weather warning for flash flooding for the Channel Country, the Peninsula, north tropical coast and the Herbert and Lower Burdekin. Flood warnings are also current for western Queensland and Gulf rivers, while Bedourie and Windorah have already been cut off. In the Diamantina Shire falls of up to 200 millimetres have been recorded and roads are closed. The town's chief executive, Scott Mason, says residents need to be wary of floodwaters. "Don't take any risks and that goes for all areas, including stormwater drains in town that have to get rid of a fair bit of water," he said. "We don't particularly want children playing around those drains or in those water holes. "If you're driving there's nowhere you can go at the moment; all roads are closed and we just ask everyone to respect that until this weather clears." Severe weather forecaster Michael Knepp says Sapphire, west of Emerald, received 75 millimetres (~3inches) of rain in an hour which is only expected every 20 to 50 years. He says the weather is due to two tropical lows, one sitting over the north of the state and the other near the Queensland-Northern Territory border. "There are some areas receiving some heavy rainfall right now and some other areas will be expecting some heavy rainfall over the next 24 to 36 hours," he said. Emergency Management Queensland says it expects there will be widespread flooding in the Channel Country in the coming days.

These T-storms jolted me out of the bed this morning. Really bad thunder, and lots of wind, and three inches of rain into a parched SW LA earth. Two hours later, these storms hit Rayne, LA. One woman dead, protecting a child, and twelve injured. This was south of I-10. Before this, an F-0 hit Crowley, LA. Reported that the Rayne tornado was an F2

Quoting JFLORIDA:634 OSS means to ask if it was approved by a panel of religious experts, business executives and weather presenters. Thats what conveys validly in his opinion to science.

Do you really want to place this type of insult? as everything you have ever posted is on record? How low can ya go bro? Or should I say, how low do you want to go,,,,,, animal level? What have you said in your past on this site? Think about it!

I am to conform to someone's expectation who can't even get the basic function of nature right? I don't think so!

I think its insulting that climatologists, meteorologists and other scientists automatically assume that people who DON'T react to Global Warming (or human-induced climate change) are automatically stupid and just don't understand.

I understand just fine. I also happen to agree that human-induced climate change is a scientific fact. However, I also believe that MANY scientists are over-reacting to "climate change" and are causing unnecessary hype and fear for financial gain and political favors.

Yes, climate change is happening and part of the cause is human activity. That doesn't necessarily mean that we are entirely the cause. However, the human species has an astronomically BAD track record at trying to regulate anything in nature. We start out with the best of intentions, but the results are normally an unmitigated disaster. The absolute LAST thing we'd want is for the U.N. and international politicians to try to regulate the Earth's climate. They can't even manage something natural and simple like malaria.

I happen to believe that "climate change" will be self-regulating. It's the Earth's ecosystem reaction to OUR activity. Climate Change isn't a bad thing... except to those who don't, can't or won't prepare for the results of it. I personally don't see climate change as being a problem, just a challenge and an opportunity. Change is good in many things, because it opens up new doors and new opportunities. Why should the climate be any different?